


Fiber Mechanics

by qwanderer



Series: Braids!Verse [1]
Category: Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Iron Man 1 starring Natasha "Toni" Stark, iron woman - Freeform, well parts of it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 02:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11749869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: Rhodey remembered when he first saw her, in one of the MIT labs, all overalls and braids and grease-streaked face and hands. She looked like a kid building with blocks, tongue out in intense concentration, fingers playing over the tools with more confidence and deftness than he’d have expected.





	Fiber Mechanics

**Author's Note:**

> This series has been hanging around in my fic ideas folder for YEARS. I hope to get more of it posted At Some Point, but I have no promises for y'all.
> 
> It might head in the frostiron direction around about Avengers, if it ever gets that far.

When Toni was small, her father had no idea what to do with her. She was a girl, and that meant she was her mother’s business. But she kept sneaking into the workshop, playing with the tools and being, all around, a worrisome nuisance. “Get out of here, go find your mother,” was basically all she heard out of Howard.

Maria would have had her dress up in ruffles and play at tea parties; Mommy loved tea parties and fancy clothes. But Toni would have none of that; if there was a ruffled dress involved, she’d squirm until she was free, often destroying the garment in the process. She became very efficient at that, and eventually her mother gave up, instead putting her in overalls and letting her play as she would. But Maria always did one thing for her daughter when she dressed Toni in the mornings: she braided Natasha’s hair in two neat french braids, pretty and intricate and tucked up and away from trouble.

Because trouble would find it, otherwise. The joint of a machine or the heat of a soldering iron. It was clear to Maria that Toni was taking after her father, and mostly she was proud, and occasionally she worried. Especially on days when Maria wasn’t well enough to get up and help Toni with her hair, and the nanny did her best to tie it up neatly and away from Natasha’s face, but it would get into things, get greasy and tangled and occasionally burned.

Maria made sure Toni knew how to do her own braids before she was sent away to school.

“It hurts my arms,” Toni complained, slumping dejectedly.

Maria sighed, and smiled ruefully. “Like with anything, practice will make you stronger,” she said.

“This is a mess. I’ll never learn.”

“Natasha,” she said, squeezing one of the girl’s sore arms comfortingly, “you have the cleverest hands of anyone I know. Better than your father’s. You’ll learn, and you’ll do it well, and soon your braids will be nicer than mine. You’ll see.”

“Ugh,” Toni said.

But she learned. And when she went away to school, she’d braid her hair every morning, and pretend it was her mother doing it, and she’d miss home.

—

It was while she was on break from MIT that she had to learn how to dress up and look pretty.

Obadiah always said that pigtail braids were for tiny girls. “If you’re gonna be the new genius behind Stark Industries when your daddy retires, you can’t look like _that_ ,” he’d say in that tone of his. “You’ve gotta start working on a professional image.”

Toni was never comfortable around Obie, and when she had to see him, she’d wear her hair down, curling around her shoulders, because that way he wouldn’t bother her about it. But in the workshop, she always wore her hair braided, because that was where she was allowed to be herself.

Company parties were full of men trying to get her attention, and she learned to appreciate that. She also learned (after her parents died and the world seemed so much bleaker all around) that a lot of people expected her to get married and turn over ownership of the company to someone who looked more like a weapons manufacturer CEO. That that was the image Obie was actually trying to build when he told her to get dressed up and look pretty for the public.

After she figured that out, she had fun reeling people in, then tossing them out. She didn’t ever intend to get married. And after ten years or so, people got used to the CEO of Stark Industries being a beautiful, rather petite woman, because if you crossed her, you found out she was fearless, ruthless and dangerous as any other CEO. Probably more.

—

Rhodey remembered when he first saw her, in one of the MIT labs, all overalls and braids and grease-streaked face and hands. She looked like a kid building with blocks, tongue out in intense concentration, fingers playing over the tools with more confidence and deftness than he’d have expected.

“Isn’t this a little past your bedtime?” he’d said, and she’d raised her eyebrows at him, smiling in an extraordinarily smug way.

“You obviously have no idea who I am,” she’d said.

“You’re a kid,” he threw back. “That’s all I need to know. Kids aren’t supposed to be up late. They need sleep.”

She only shrugged. “Nobody ever told me that,” she said.

He was going to comment more, but he got caught up in what  she was building, and they spent two or three hours discussing robotics before Rhodey managed to drag himself away to sleep himself.

“By the way,” he said on the way out, “I’m James Rhodes. You ever need help with anything, just ask around for Rhodey.”

“Will do,” she said. “Still haven’t figured out my name?” She brushed tendrils of hair out of her face with the back of her wrist and looked at him, eyes sparkling with challenge.

“Uh… no?”

“Toni Stark,” she said. “Good meeting you, Rhodey.” She waved jauntily, smirked and returned to her project.

Rhodey shook his head as he turned away. “Would not have called that,” he muttered to himself. “But maybe I should’ve.”

It was a week or two later when he next saw her again, and he almost didn’t recognize her. In fact he didn’t, at first.

It was a pretty big event with a guest speaker, and he wouldn’t have even noticed another pretty white girl in the crowd, except that this one….

She stood up in the middle of the lecture and started arguing the finer points of circuit design with the guy onstage. Tiny, young, but looking flawless, and apparently absolutely fearless.

With her hair down and curling around her shoulders and a pale lilac sweater and dark jeans, she looked like she belonged in this place, with this crowd. She didn’t look like a brilliant fifteen-year-old engineer and heir to a weapons empire. She looked like a pretty college student.

So everyone was pretty shocked at her guts.

The girl Rhodey had met, overalls, braids and grease, looked younger, there was no question. But she also looked more competent. When Toni was in her braids, somehow you knew to expect the unexpected.

She held her own in the public eye, too. But after all, she was fifteen, and no matter how cocky she was, she didn’t know everything. Of course she got into trouble. But she learned quick, and for the times when she did need help, Rhodey became a sort of big brother.

After a while, word got around that you didn’t want to mess with Toni Stark, because if her wits didn’t get you, Rhodey would.

—

When Toni was kidnapped, they cut off her hair.

I mean, yeah, big metal thing embedded in her chest, kind of distressing, but when she was ready to get to work, what really bothered her was that she didn’t have her braids.

It was kind of her usual arm warm-up - before she went to work forging things, she’d do her braids, then stretch, and then she’d be ready. Instead she ran her fingers through her hair, running out far too soon, wondered what Obie would think of that (if he ever saw her again), and got to work.

—

Rhodey had been so relieved to find her. She’d been bruised and scraped and sunburned, barely dressed and hair all sticking up.

“God, I thought I’d never see you again,” he said, blinking back tears. “You’re the most beautiful sight in the world right now.”

Toni was a little taken aback by that, but she recovered quickly. “Wow, things must have really gone downhill out there without me,” she quipped, grinning.

Rhodey shook his head and offered her his arm, supporting her on the way to the helicopter.

—

When Toni stepped off the plane in Malibu, Pepper was there, rushing towards her. “Oh, your hair,” she said when she noticed.

Toni smirked. “What, short isn’t in this season? They lied to me!”

Pepper just took Toni’s head in her hands and pulled her in, and Toni slumped forward into her arms. Pepper ran her fingers through Toni’s hair and said softly, “I’m sure we can do _something_ with this.”

Toni just laughed, glad to be home.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all! If you enjoyed this you could check out more of my writing on [my novelist blog](http://irenewendywode.tumblr.com), or more fandom stuff on [my fandom/personal blog](http://qwanderer.tumblr.com).


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